Negative Zero: Soldier of Light Chronicles Book 1 Read online

  “Mouska!” I heard her scream. Why is there so much pain in her voice?

  The black was still all I could see, but I went in and out of it, hearing pieces of conversation between her voice and the voices of other people. I heard sirens, clanking, the banging of doors being opened and shut, squeaking wheels, metal objects hitting each other; I heard it all.

  “Where did she fall from?” one of the voices asked.

  “I do not know. I heard loud music,” her voice was frantic. “Evika lives on ninth floor. I went in with extra key to tell her....to tell her she is disturbing neighbors and saw open window. I look out window and I see her ---” she broke off and started sobbing.

  I wanted to jump out of my skin. I wanted to run into her arms and hold her and tell her I was fine. I didn't even know if I was fine, but I felt like I was. I felt like if my senses were back, I would have been able to just get up and walk away.

  I thought of the quote, “I think, therefore, I am.” Was this what death was like? Was that true? Would I just be some floating mind, hearing all of the living conversations around me? I felt like I was going to go insane. It was killing me that I had no control over my body and no control over my sight. I heard the sirens once again, but it was as if I were moving, and they were moving along with me. My eyes would not budge; opening them was an impossibility.

  I heard her close to me, still crying, whispering a broken up prayer in Russian into my ear. My blindness frustrated me, and I became overwhelmed by the sirens once again....and the prayers....and then the radio conversation over the speaker and more clanking. The roar of an engine was startling. I realized I was not in the hospital like I thought I was. What does this mean? Where are they taking us? The panic took over again. It was too much, and I shut down into darkness.

  It was a longer darkness this time, but during this one, I was able to dream for a while. It wasn't one of the dreams I could control, but I was grateful to just have something to see. I was mobile in this dream and I found myself sitting under the willow tree at our old house, the one I remember from my childhood. Everyone always used to say that the willow trees looked sad, but I always disagreed. When the wind blew, the willows would all point in the same direction so freely, then they'd sway back to their hanging position. There was a contentment in the tree compared to the other ones. The wind always blew through them and sent the leaves into a panic, but not my willow tree. I always felt safe under the willow. It was always where she could find me. I'd grab blankets and sheets and make forts under it for the entire day while I sat and colored and hummed tunes of my favorite songs.

  As I was remembering those moments, I inhaled and smelled the crisp, spring air. A hint of freshly cut grass hit my olfactory sense and brought me back to a time when she had just cut the lawn with the push lawnmower. I caught a glimpse of her taking off her grassy gloves and walking over to me, smiling radiantly. Her hair shined auburn in the sun light, but the closer she got, the more she faded. I started to cry as I looked for her, trying to hold the image of her in my mind as long as I could before it was gone.

  “Mommy?” I called for her in a whisper. I felt like a child calling for her and realized I was a child in this memory as I sat there. What was this sick cycle my mind was taking me on? I didn't want to relive parts of committed memories if they were going to hurt. I'd hurt for way too long already.

  I waited for more. I held my knees into my chest and slowly scoped the yard through my blurry eyes, waiting for her to appear again. Waiting, hoping, anticipating glimpses of her were all that kept me sane. My anticipation made me forget about the fall, the sounds of breaking pavement and bones, the sirens, the Russian prayers, and Ms. Makerov's strained voice. My stupidity of the previous night. The alcohol. The dancing. The arguing. The pain. Oh God, that pain. That emptiness that, no matter how hard I tried to fill, nothing made it go away. Nothing. I'd been so hollow without her.

  I was afraid to get angry again, fearing that I was being tested by God Himself. Maybe the glimpses were meant to be a test, my last trial. He was taunting me with her because He knew the memories would get to me, and could be used to enrage me, and as soon as I screwed up, wham! I'd be cast into some deep, black abyss, all alone for eternity. My own hell.

  I laid my head on my knees and stared at the neighbor's fence as I let the tears fall. The familiar dog on the other side was pacing from one end to the other. I watched the black lab's paws under the fence, and I was reminded of the time my mother and I had gotten Beau, a Shepard-collie mix. Not even meaning to buy a dog, we'd gone to the pet store and saw him. We were just trying to kill time before heading to a movie that afternoon. We'd played with him for over an hour before leaving without him. We'd asked the store questions about him: where he came from and how long they had him. We sat in the car for twenty minutes in that parking lot, contemplating heading to the movie or buying a dog. We'd finally decided. If we went to the movie, came back after lunch, and he was still there, then it was meant to be. Three hours later, we pulled into the parking lot of the pet shop once again to see that dog patiently sitting at that front window, as if he knew we would come back for him. We took him home that day and never regretted bringing him home. He became the “man of the house.”

  But Beau was not in this memory as I sat under the willow tree. There came a point when I didn't even know which memory my mind was trying to relay to me because my mother's image was gone. She didn't come back. Nonetheless, I was calm. I wouldn't call it “at peace,” but it was calm, wherever I was. I tried rationalizing my experience. I concluded I was in a death transit. Maybe it was some sort of waiting room until I got to the pearly gates. Maybe the transit to Heaven was your mind reliving its most fondest of memories until you get to the real thing.

  “Hello,” a voice said right next to me.

  I jumped and turned my head away from the pacing dog to see him sitting in the grass, leaning back on his hands, sporting a dark, leather jacket with his legs stretched out and crossed in front of him. It was that mysterious stranger who'd made his appearance in a dream once before. I looked at him, into his dark, emerald eyes, and didn't say a word. The questions that ran through my mind were too fast-paced in order for me to pick one to speak coherently.

  “I see you're having difficulty with the glimpses. That's understandable, considering the condition you are in right now,” he said. “I'd like to help.”

  “C-Condition?” I finally spoke. “I don't understand. You mean I'm causing this?”

  “The failed glimpses? Yes, but like I said, it's understandable. Not only is your body going through quite a bit of trauma at the moment, it goes without question that your mind is too.”

  I looked at him incredulously and then glanced around the memory of the yard and the willow tree before meeting his eyes again. “Where am I?”

  “You're in the memory realm. It's a safe place for you to be right now until you can go back.”

  “Back?” I wasn't following.

  “Yes, back to your body. Right now, it's in no condition for you to manifest, so you are safer here. But you will be ready soon.” He smiled sincerely.

  I shook my head, trying to make sense of his words. “I don't understand. Back to my body? Am I---”

  “Dead? Technically, yes. You are doing what is known as 'crossing.' I'm here to keep you in this twilight for a while, until you can go back.” He winced at a thought. “Believe me, you don't want to go back right now.”

  He seemed so advanced in the topic of the conversation, while I was still stuck on the whole where am I part. I just stared at him.

  He grinned. “It's okay. We can get into all the details later. Right now, I need to distract you while you are waiting. Did you want to stay here, or did you want to plant into another memory? Just think of it, and I'll get you there.” That five-hundred watt smile crossed his face.

  Before I could even finish the thought, I was already there. I blinked, and it appeared, the living room of our old house. I saw myself sitting on the floor with my mother. We were coloring together and watching cartoons. It was an episode of Tom and Jerry. Jerry had just branded Tom under his tail with a hot iron, sending Tom through the ceiling as smoke trailed behind him. The mark of a V was left on his bare skin once the fur had finished burning.

  “Mommy?” My small, four-year-old voice echoed with a question to her. “Is that what happened to me?” I lifted my arm to show the birthmark on my right wrist. As I observed the memory, I, too, looked at my own wrist and rubbed my thumb across the mark.

  “No, sweetie. That's called a birthmark. You were born with it. Your daddy has one just like it.” Smiling, she cleared a piece of hair from my face.

  “I didn't get burned by a mouse like Tom?” I asked, focusing on the cartoon once again.

  My mother giggled. “No, silly. You didn't get burned. It's just a mark that makes you special.” She went back to picking a new crayon and then leaned into the “little me” and whispered, “I think it looks like a negative zero.”

  My little eyes widened and looked up at her. “Like a number, Mommy?”

  She smiled down at me. “Yup, just like a number.”

  I watched the two of us color for a few more moments, still tracing the mark on my wrist with my thumb. I hadn't noticed the tears streaming down my cheeks until I tasted the salt. I blinked a few times to clear my eyes, hardly conscious of the next memory my mind was trying to replay.

  I was suddenly standing in the rec room of the house, and I saw her sitting at the piano with a little girl about the age of seven. It was she and I. I watched them sit together while my mother played one of her favorite songs. The music coming from the Yamaha was a song from Phantom of the Opera. The “little me” watched her fingers and where they wer
e going on the piano keys. When the song was over, my mother moved to the side to let me have the middle of the bench. I started playing slowly, figuring out the chords of the beginning of the song, getting most of them right, and sounding them out in memorization.

  She chuckled lightly and shook her head. “I don't even know why I try to teach you how to read the music. You don't even need the notes, smarty-pants.”

  The “little me” just laughed and kept going, correlating all of the chords. My mother sat there and watched in awe with that radiant smile I'll always remember.

  “You have many others, you know.” His voice startled me again. I turned to see him standing in the threshold of the doorway, leaning against the frame and watching the memory with me.

  “I know.” I half-smiled as I looked back at the two at the piano. “But this is one of my favorites.”

  “I know it is,” he said.

  I cleared some tears from my cheeks before turning to face him once again. “So, are you ever going to tell me what this walk down memory lane is all about?” I asked him.

  He broke into a boyish grin. “Of course. It's your right to know now. I'm your Guardian Angel.”

  I paused before speaking. “You were in my other dream, too.”

  “Your other dream?” he questioned.

  “Yeah, I mean, this is sort of a dream too, right?”

  He shrugged with a smirk. “If you say so, and yes, I was in your dream the other night.” He raised his brow. “You know, the one when you didn't want to know my name?”

  Chagrined, I stood.

  He held out his hand to me. “I'm Hayden.”

  I held out my hand to shake his. “I'm...”

  “Evika.” His smile widened. “Yeah, I know.” He laughed lightly as he grasped my hand firmly, shook it, and then released it. The gesture felt so strangely proper.

  “Right,” I said. Duh. “Hayden,” I said his name aloud. “I like that name. It's different.”

  “Thank you...I think.”

  “I do have another one. A memory, I mean,” I declared.

  “As you wish,” he said. The environment around us whirled as we stood in place. The blurs of the images looked like they would have made me dizzy, but they didn't affect me at all. I blinked and we were standing next to a blue Buick Skylark. It was the car I remembered from most of my childhood. It was sitting in the parking lot of Big Spot department store. It was exactly the memory I wanted. I saw myself at the age of nine in the backseat of the car, swaddled up in blankets and coughing as I read a Judy Blume book. A box of tissues at my feet and Beau by my side. I walked up close to the rear window and saw Beau turn his head and stare straight at me....or through me? I froze for a moment, hitching my breath and wondering if he did, in fact, see me. Then I watched him return to his formal position, laying his head back into the lap of my younger self. I breathed again.

  “He can't see you, you know? These are only glimpses,” the angel declared, “like a rewind of everything that already has been.”

  I looked around to take in the scenery. Random cars pulling in and out of the parking lot. People dressed in their fall coats, carrying plastic bags and pushing shopping carts. The wind blew, and the leaves danced around me and the angel. It was the fall season, exactly as I remembered it.

  “This is it.” I looked at Hayden. “This is the memory.” Unchanged, he looked at me. My eyes moved to the store building. “Can we?” I asked him.

  “Go inside? Yes, we can go in. Remember, no one can see you.”

  I started walking briskly, eager to find her inside the store. A red truck backed out hastily without giving me time to dart out of the way. It glided right through my body, and I froze. It didn't stop. It kept moving along as if nothing were in its way.

  Hayden gave me a know-it-all smirk. “Told you.”

  I checked my body. I was fine. Of course, I was fine. I was only dreaming. I looked at him to see his expression change to a patronizing smile. Then I continued walking.

  “We'll have to work on this trust issue,” he poked.

  “Why is that?” I shot him a look. I don't know why he got to me with that comment. I tried determining if it was his cockiness that bothered me or if it was the fact that I was so determined to get into that store to see my mother again, and he was partly a distraction. I guess it was a bit of both.

  “Because we have a long road ahead of us, you and me.” He put his hands into the leather pockets of his jacket and continued walking.

  We were finally in the store. I knew exactly where to go. I herded through the crowd by the main entrance and headed to aisle seventeen where the toys and kids arts and crafts were. You would have thought that someone smacked the back of my knees to make me drop, but seeing her whip around the corner and feeling her walk right through me made me fall to them. I gasped as I inhaled her scent. It was a mix of her Suave hairspray and her freshly-laundered clothing. I hyperventilated, whipping around on my knee caps so as not to miss her next step.

  “Sh-She walked right through me.” I grabbed my jacket collar and pieces of my hanging hair and held them to my nose. “I can smell her! She's all over me!” I cried. “I even felt and heard her heartbeat,” I rambled.

  I put my hands to my chest, sat back on my feet, and watched her in awe. She headed toward the Play-Doh, list in hand, along with about five other things she'd grabbed from the previous aisles during her shopping spree. She found an empty cart sitting in the aisle, claimed it as her own, and dumped all of her items into it.

  I laughed as I cried my tears. I remembered being so upset and worried that she'd taken so long while I sat in the car, and now I was seeing these very moments that kept her from coming back out in a timely manner. There were many distractions.

  “Oh, my gosh,” my hand went to my mouth. “I remember. That's the list I wrote her. I was so sick, and she wanted me to write down some ideas, things for her to get me at the store to keep me occupied while I was home from school. She had me rest in the car with Beau while I waited for her.” I shook my head as I watched her. “That list was ridiculous, and she bought every item on it. She wasn't supposed to.”

  I'd forgotten that Hayden was behind me until he spoke. “You were sick. She wanted to make you happy,” he said to me quietly.

  “She spoiled me,” I corrected him.

  “You were sick,” he repeated.

  I shook my head in disapproval, still watching her go through the colors of the Play-Doh, grabbing one of every color. “I didn't have to be sick. She would have done it anyway.”

  He watched her with me and thought for a moment. She stood on her toes and reached into the very back of the shelf, stretching her arm for the last tub of orange Play-Doh.

  “Okay, maybe not so many colors,” he joked with a caring tone, “but, you're right; she still would have.”

  I smiled at him for humoring me.

  I followed my mother's every move. She must have taken another half-hour packing that cart finding new things to throw into it. Markers, colored pencils, construction paper, and even some stickers. Her last stop was the medicinal aisle where she stocked up on cherry flavored cough drops. I couldn't stop my heart from beating with the excitement it felt as I watched her. I wanted so badly to be able to run into her arms and hold her again. It hurt to know that I couldn't. I tried not letting myself get carried away, but I got as close as I could, walking through the check-out line with her. She let a short, gray-haired lady carrying a heavy bag of dog food go in front of her. I smiled widely and shook my head.

  “No wonder you took so long,” I whispered to her.

  I followed her back out to the car. She parked the cart next to the side of the Buick, running to the back door where I was sitting. I'd been crying, my face blotchy and red. The book was on the floor, and Beau was on all fours barking out the rear window, as if yelling at my mother to hurry.

  “Oh my!” She swung the back door open. “Evika, honey, what's wrong?”

  “Mom, I didn't know where you were. You took so long. I was afraid something happened to you in the store,” I cried harder.

  “Oh, I'm so sorry, honey. I thought you would have taken a nice, long nap while you waited for me.”